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Other Setting: The Rainbow Lake
Created by Elizabeth Barrette. This structure manifests as a body of water. (It is not the same as the ocean; it's usually fresh, though on rare occasions it may turn into a salt lake.) Rainbow Lake is very mysterious and nobody understands it fully. People sometimes pester the angels or spirit guides for more information, but if anyone knows specifics, they haven't said. Rainbow Lake changes shape, usually in slow motion but sometimes quite fast. It usually rests in the same approximate vicinity but not always the exact same place; occasionally it shows up somewhere completely different. It has never been known to harm anyone, but sometimes it may scare them with a sudden appearance or stormy waves. Most famously, it changes color. A majority of the time it has the same range of blue to green shades as ordinary water. During that time it may correspond to any mortal freshwater lake it happens to resemble, but often it doesn't do anything at all. Other colors appear uncommonly or rarely, and some of them connect to specific mortal lakes rather reliably. A particular shade of pink corresponds to Lac Rose in Senegal. Black corresponds to Bagantung Lake in Indonesia. White may correspond to any of the glacial lakes with milky meltwater. When Rainbow Lake is in phase with a mortal lake, the veil is thin between the worlds. Bystanders on either side may catch glimpes of imagery or snatches of sound from the other side. Other strange effects may occur, such as healing or inspiration. It is said that on exceptional occasions, people can cross right over from one side to the other; but nobody currently in the Afterlife will admit to having done it, or even seen it. It's just a story that people tell ... a very persistent one, across multiple cultures. Purple relates to a Cherokee myth of an enigmatic purple lake that appears -- and disappears -- deep within the Smoky Mountains. This one is not the Afterlife touching an ordinary lake in the material world, but rather, a brief extension of the lake in the Afterlife into a low place that isn't usually full of mortal water. It has healing qualities, both in the Afterlife for spirits and in the material world for animals (or far more rarely, humans, who almost never see it). The purple lake only appears when needed, in a secluded place, and if a disrespectful person finds it then it will vanish in an instant to reappear somewhere else. But it can heal anything. Rainbow Lake is said to have a gold phase, but nobody will admit to having seen it. There are stories passed down by spirits who aren't around currently, the Afterlife equivalent of urban legends. One version says that before Jehovah divided the heavens from the earth and the land from the water, He saved one drop of the undifferentiated stuff, and that went into forming Rainbow Lake. Other versions claim that it was made when Zeus spilled a goblet of ambrosia, or when Odin spilled a horn of mead; and so it goes. The list of powers attributed to the golden phase is essentially limitless, but enlightenment is probably the most often mentioned. Perhaps it can do anything it pleases. Sometimes fog hides the lake so there is no telling what it looks like or where, if anywhere, it goes. Mortal legends about enchanted lakes, vanishing islands, and the Mists of Avalon may have arisen from this. Category:Other Settings Category:Afterlife